Dan Ashworth, appointed by the FA last year, says his role is to create a bigger pool of players for England manager Roy Hodgson to select his squads from.

And he told the Daily Telegraph that not enough current English footballers feel truly comfortable on the ball.

The 42-year-old former pro footballer said: "Without being disrespectful to our current players, we are now further behind some other nations and we have to make sure that gap decreases.

"We have to have a more technically based game and players who are more comfortable on the ball.

"I see my job as giving Roy a bigger and better pool of players so if Wayne Rooney can't play, no problem.

"When you look back at the likes of Chris Waddle and Paul Gascoigne, we always would have a series of match-winners in our teams, technical players.

"It is for full-backs to get forward, midfield players who can rotate and who can deal with the ball under pressure, can score and create.

"My vision, my dream, is that there's a philosophy on how we play the game from the cradle to the grave.

"We have to change years and years and years of ingrained habits of encouraging children to smash the ball up the pitch, applauding when they smash it further and longer. We have to avoid criticising when children try skills.

"And there are 60 million people involved in this: media, supporters, parents, coaches, players - everybody."

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t's wrong to be making a joke out of Bender's name at the expense of gay people. It's the kind of childish, uncivilised thing that Football365 would deride and ridicule if it was another media outlet saying. Why is there a need for jokes like this? Does it make your writers feel like men? F365 might suggest that I 'lighten up', but it is genuinely traumatic for people who have been oppressed all their lives to be the butt of jokes, and to be told...

ou can't blame De Gea for wanting to leave, he has enough to do in front of goal as it is as well as taking on the role of Man Utd's version of Derek Acorah in trying to contact and organise a defence that isn't there.